Tag Archives: self publishing

I was talking about finishing things last time, and I followed through on my own advise and finished up a project that has been a long time coming.

My friend, colleague, writer, film-maker, world-traveler and all-around good guy Sean Sakamoto and I had an idea to do a small collection of speculative-fiction stories about New York (where we live). The initial call went out to a few close friends, and we got a handful of stories. We wrote a couple ourselves and put together a small book, and here it is.

Slipstream City Volume 1: True Stories From Other New Yorks

It has taken a while to get here, but I’m glad it’s finally on Amazon, where people can possibly click on it and maybe even buy it, and at last, I hope, read it.

The actual exposing-the-book process has been very liberating, and I want to do more of it and on a larger scale. This is the first time I’m independently putting out my own material. Before, it has always been somebody else holding out an umbrella to shelter my work. This time, it’s just me (and Sean.)

We’re well on our way to working up a call for the second book. I want lots of stories, rich and thematic. But that’s the figure – for now, we are working to get the book more exposure as Volume 1 sails into the rear-view mirror.

On a personal level, this is the first work I have released into the open world since 2010. My short story “Entombed” was a finalist in the Blizzard Worldwide Story Contest and that left me with an incredible high, but shortly thereafter… well, maybe that’s for another day. I’m just glad to be back in the saddle.

Anyone can come up with ideas, a few will even try to execute it, but the difference between an idea and a complete work is a vast gulf of effort and pain. Crossing that gulf is what separates the writers from those who can’t. Or don’t. Or won’t.

Or that has been my case, anyway. For years, I struggled with this idea of identity, whether or not I was a writer, for years, I wanted someone to tap my shoulder with a pencil and say, “Yes, now you’re a writer.” When I got stories into magazines, it wasn’t enough. When I had a play in a theater, it wasn’t enough. When I won a singular award from among thousands of stories, it wasn’t enough. And when I told this to someone, they blinked and shook their head. “You’ve arrived,” they said. “This is it.” But I didn’t believe it.

And now, it has been years in this malaise, struggling to self-identify as a writer and being unable to do so. Toying with ideas, making notes, creating elaborate outlines for books that don’t get written. Jotting a sentence or two every few days for ideas that would be brilliant if they were stretched out into stories, but it doesn’t happen. And now, I’m not a writer, I’m someone who thinks about writing, who wants to write, who dreams about it, but does anything but fucking write.

So.

It gives me great pleasure to know that a small anthology I put together with a friend of mine is finished, and is under review with Amazon, and in a few short hours, I will be able to share a link to it. I’m done waiting for other people to tell me that I’m a writer.

If I’m the boss, then I demand a story from me every month, on the dot. Get to work.